Tracking inventory has traditionally been an important component in managing a variety of businesses that sell, transport, and manufacture stock. By counting inventory, the businesses can determine, for example, if stock is missing, how much stock the business needs to fulfill current and future orders, and how much stock is stored at a particular location.
As areas used to store stock, such as warehouses, have increased in size, it is becoming less and less practical to have the counting of stock managed and performed solely by employees. Businesses have used computerized inventory systems to meet this growing impracticality.
Some current computerized inventory systems track inventory only at the lowest level of resolution within the system. For example, the inventory system may track bins of items, but not the pallets that the bins are stored upon, or the aisles in which the pallets are located. Additional some inventory systems require counting every tracked item. This may require putting a physical block on an entire location (i.e., prohibiting movement of stock into or out of the location) until the entire count is finished. Additionally, some inventory systems can only count locations, and inventory located at resources, such as an incoming truck or a production machine, may remain uncounted.